Earlier this week, the tech world experienced a blast from the past when Nokia announced that it was suing Apple for patent infringement. In a series of lawsuits that span jurisdictions across the globe, Nokia is suing Apple for infringing upon 32 distinct patents that encompass a wide swath of mobile-related areas, including UI design, antenna technology, chipset technology and more.
Apple of course responded with an anti-trust suit of its own, alleging that Nokia was “colluding” with patent assertion entities in order to extract licensing terms from Apple at prices that are much higher than what the fair market would otherwise demand. From the looks of it, Nokia and Apple will not be settling this dispute anytime soon and we can likely look forward to a long road of litigation ahead.
In the meantime, we’ve already seen some minor casualties from Apple and Nokia’s burgeoning patent dispute. Originally spotted by Mac Rumors, Apple on Friday began removing Withings accessories from its online and retail stores.
Apple appears to have pulled the accessories in the last day or two, eliminating Withings products like the Body Cardio Scale, the Smart Body Analyzer, and the Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor. When searching for these products on Apple’s site, they are no longer listed as available for purchase.
The reason for the removal stems from the fact that the Withings brand falls under the Nokia umbrella. Recall that Nokia acquired the France-based digital-health oriented company earlier this year for $190 million.
That Apple would make this type of move should hardly come as a surprise. For starters, Apple views the ability to sell products on its online store and in its worldwide chain of retail stores as a privilege that it won’t hesitate to take away in a heartbeat. Second, we’ve already seen Apple do this before, most notably in 2014 when it removed all Bose products from its stores following a settlement of a patent dispute pertaining to noise-canceling headphone technology.
